Serendipity Book

Nissan Qashqai Skateboard ad

Loving this Nissan car-as-skateboard ad ... [Embedded YouTube Video]
Though Carscoop points out that the idea of 4x4 as urban skateboard has a legacy... [Embedded YouTube Video]

PR does not have a duty to tell the truth

Martin Moore reports from a PR Week sponsored debate at the University of Westminster this week where some big names in the PR industry debated whether or not ‘PR has a duty to tell the truth’.

The result: 53% of the 260 members of the audience voted against the motion.

Should we be surprised? Whilst aspiring to be truthful it seems that the PR profession recognised that telling the truth was not compatible with their duty to their clients!

Max Clifford was arguing against the motion. In a low-key, frank and absorbingly anecdotal performance he told the audience how his first duty was always to his client and that he had been 'telling lies on behalf of my clients for 40 years'. He chose to lie in certain instances because the 'price of telling that truth would be terribly destructive to lots of people'.

More interesting were the justifications given by the panel for not telling the truth. Chief among these (dwarfing the rest) was the culpability of the news media. Journalists were to blame, they said, because journalists constantly sought out tension, discord and disruption. PR executives had to protect their clients from them and, when necessary, fib / be economical with the truth / lie. If this is the view across the industry it does not bode well for a constructive dialogue between PR and the media.

Only 8% of UK adults consider web to be primary news source

These news media consumption numbers from KPMG surprised me - I expected more people in the UK to have switched to the web as a primary means of news by now ...

• Just 8 per cent of UK respondents named the Internet as their preferred source of news
• This figure rises to 26 per cent among 18-25 year olds in the UK.

Plus it's quite surprising (to me at least) that the UK lags Spain in terms of web news media consumption ...

• Use of internet news sites was significantly higher across all age groups in Spain than in the UK, the US, Germany and the Netherlands.
• Around 70 per cent of Spanish respondents under 25, and 60 per cent of Spaniards 25-35, said they get their news from the web.

Via: Press Gazette

ONS: UK marriages fall 10% in a year

The Office for National Statistics reported today that in 2005 there were only 283,730 weddings in the UK, down nearly 10 per cent from 313,550 weddings in the previous year.

The ONS attribute this sharp fall to the introduction of legislation to ban 'sham weddings' as part of the Asylum and Immigration Act which was introduced in Feb 2005.

Stephen Pound MP described the nature of the issue in a statement to parliament in May 2004.

Bandwagon phallus logo not intentional

Seems that the bandwagon logo that I posted about yesterday is not intended to look like a phallus after all.

Terence posted in a comment on the bandwagon blog that they just "transposed the “b” in bandwagon and stuck a bar on top of it. It’s actually supposed to be: a headphone, a “high” note (emphasis on high), a bandwagon, or bart simpson with funny ears."

They're now asking whether or not they should change it ...

PollPub.com Vote

Should Bandwagon change its logo?

Yes
No

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Poll powered by PollPub.com Free Polls

And have made this offer (not sure if it is transferable): "If you create the new Bandwagon logo (before Thursday), we will give you 2 free accounts, credit inside the application and a link to your work/blog/portfolio on our ridethebandwagon.com pages." Any takers?

Are most planners now romantics?

"Romanticism was ... an artistic and intellectual movement ... a revolt against ... the norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature ... it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature."

I'm tempted to argue that romanticism has become the dominant intellectual movement in planning these days. It's increasingly hard to find anyone who works in planning these days who is willing to espouse a slightly more rational, positivist, objectivist view of how advertising might work. Whilst a healthy scepticism of so-called 'marketing scientists' is one thing, the upcoming generation of planners in particular seem to have absolutely no interest in what the past can teach us about the future and seem happy to ignore any inconvenient truths that may arise from research.

Reading many of the planning blogs out there I'm often reminded of Stephen Colbert's satirical address to George Bush at the White House correspondents' dinner last year  ...

"We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works."

Maybe I got out of the wrong side of bed this morning ;-)

Human Skateboard Ad

Great film from skate shoe brand Sneaux at PES ...

Via Josh Spear / Notcot

Bandwagon should create a buzz

I'm jumping on the bandwagon. This useful-sounding service will apparently back up all your iTunes online. Nice.

To generate buzz they came up with the idea of giving those bloggers that link to them and post their logo a free subscription when the service starts up in a few days.

As the New York Times recently reported, incentives really do make a difference when it comes to creating word of mouth.

And is it just me or is that one hell of a phallic logo? Perhaps this will end up being just a scam designed to make us all look stupid?

Via Russell Davies.

History of Planning

John Grant treats us to his "hazy recollections" of the history of planning over on Brand Tarot this morning. I particularly love his description of the introduction of Millward Brown's LINK ad pre-testing system in the 90s ...

"Meanwhile, ever sensitive to the current debates in advertising, Millward Brown launch the Awareness Index, the most reductive answer to any complex question since the "42" of HHG2G"

Entertainingly YouTube has this footage of the Millward Brown Xmas party. Could the heart of England's biggest research agency be trying to prove that they can party?

Second Life backlash picks up pace

The backlash against Second Life is building and even reached the Daily Telegraph last week. Here's a taste ...

 

Daily Telegraph > "While Initiation Island was quite densely populated, elsewhere it was hard to find other users. There seemed to be very little to do apart from spend money. And the main thing for sale was sex."

 

ValleyWag > "There's nothing wrong with a service that appeals to tens of thousands of people, but in a billion-person internet, that population is also a rounding error. If most of the people who try Second Life bail (and they do), we should adopt a considerably more skeptical attitude about proclamations that the oft-delayed Virtual Worlds revolution has now arrived."

 

AdFreak > "Launching marketing schemes in virtual worlds now seems passé. Just six months ago, brands garnered instant publicity for such efforts through a press release. No more."

Grant McCracken > "Second Life is frequently a stage without actors. What is missing is the small murmur of activity, the gentle dynamism that other people bring to our lives."

 

Information Week > "Virtual worlds - the next big nothing?"

CarScoop > "The way things are going, at end of the year the only car company that won’t have some sort of engagement with “Sitting Life” will be Lada…"

Digital Agency > "I've never been totally convinced by the hoopla and hype that surrounds Second Life. To my mind, the jury is still out."